Margaret thought for a moment that she saw a cockroach crawling in between the rubbery lips and the teeth of the whale-shark woman, but when she squinted and leaned forward it disappeared. Probably a trick of the light, she thought. The fire cast shadows in the room, which refracted and bent the edges of people and objects, so that nothing ever really kept still.

The wide-mouthed woman was still talking, and Margaret wrapped her hands around her cup of tea, trying to concentrate.